The ’every day’ of polarisation in schools; understanding polarisation as (not)dialogue

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses how ‘polarisations’ in which social tensions between the religious, ethnic and socio-economic groups are believed to increase are experienced and understood by secondary school teachers in the Netherlands. Based on the idea that polarisation is present in everyday interactions, this study contributes to an everyday perspective on polarisation by unravelling the everyday contradictions, tensions, and incongruities that constitute and keep polarisation in place. Borrowing from critical discourse analyses and linguistic ethnography perspectives the analyses shows that the everyday reproduction of polarisation in schools consists not only of the local reproduction of existing minority and majority viewpoints, but also reproduces the interactive dynamics that make it hard to maintain dialogue in concrete situations of polarisation. Making use of Lyotard’s idea that heterogeneous narratives produce different languages of justice, the paper explains polarisation not just as a clash between incommensurable world views, but between different rules of ‘how to play the game’. Such a view also explains why it is complicated to use dialogue to overcome incommensurable worlds. The paper ends by providing conditions that can help overcome the reproduction of existing controversies in schools through dialogue.